(b c450 bce; d c385 bce). Greek dramatist. The chief poet of Athenian Old Comedy, he wrote more than 40 plays, of which 11 have survived.
Of the works of Aristophanes’ first period (427–421 bce), the revised Clouds includes many references to music; the most noteworthy are the mockery of Damon for his concern with technicalities of metre (647ff) and a description (961ff) of ‘the old-fashioned education’ (hē archaia paideia) provided by the kitharistēs (not merely a teacher of the kithara but more properly a schoolmaster). The Knights (also from the first period) similarly shows a special concern with music. A criticism of grotesque Mimesis in drama leads to a parody of the Pythagorean theory of the soul as a harmonia (521ff, 531ff). There are also passages on lyra tuning and modality (989ff), and on the nomos orthios (1278ff).
The plays of Aristophanes’ early period exemplify with particular aptness the structure of Old Comedy, especially in the use of parodos (entrance song) and parabasis, a long passage in the middle of the play in which the chorus would come forward (parabainein) and address the audience directly, sometimes as spokesmen for the poet. It is generally thought that during his middle period (415–405 bce), beginning with the Birds, a major change took place: choral songs and dances became less relevant to the action, as the stage direction chorou suggests (for another view, see Beare).
The Frogs is the only comedy from the middle period in which Aristophanes deals particularly with music, the central action being a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the chair of poetry in Hades. Aristophanes considered that the ideals of mousikē which he upheld – poetry with music – were perfectly exemplified in Aeschylean tragedy (cf 1500ff). While admitting the brilliance of Euripides, he indicted him on many counts of musical malfeasance, such as making melismatic settings of individual syllables and deriving lyric choruses from unlikely and unsavoury sources, and he introduced for a Euripidean lyric Muse, summoned to appear as pseudo-accompanist, a dancing girl rattling her crotala (clappers or ‘bones’; 944, 1281–2, 1301ff, 1314). Nor was Socrates spared: Aristophanes charged him with having advocated the destruction of the musical and literary traditions of tragedy (1493, apobalonta mousikēn).
During his final period (392–388 bce) Aristophanes continued to diminish the relevance of the chorus to the exposition; its presence in the revised Plutus actually constitutes a problem. Topical references also decrease steadily in the plays of both the middle and the later periods.
See also Ethos, and Greece, §I.
Of the surviving comedies, only the overtly political Knights seems not to have attracted music of more recent times. The most ambitious works have been based on the Lysistrata, from Schubert's one-act Singspiel Die Verschworenen or Der häusliche Krieg (composed 1821–3; making some use also of the Ecclesiazusae or ‘Women in Parliament’) and an operetta by Henry Hiles (1885) setting the same Castelli libretto, to Paul Lincke's operetta Lysistrata (1902) and Raoul Gunsbourg's musical comedy of the same name (1923). Lysistrata has inspired ballet music by Mark Brunswick (1930), László Lajtha (1933), Richard Mohaupt in his dance comedy (1941; rev. 1955 for orchestra as Der Weiberstreik von Athen) and Boris Blacher (1951), whose music also produced an orchestral suite.
To take incidental music in the chronological order of the plays, H.A. Clarke (1886) and C.H. Parry (1914) composed for the Acharnians; Parry for the Clouds (1905); Tertius Noble (1897) and Vaughan Williams (1909) for the Wasps (the latter arranged into an ‘Aristophanic suite’); Dennis Arundell (1927) for the Peace; Parry (1883), J.K Paine (1900), Humperdinck (1908), Diepenbrock (1917), Walter Braunfels (‘lyrisch-phantastisches Spiel’, 1920), Georges Auric (1928, rev. 1966), Varvoglis (1942) and Petrassi (1947) for the Birds; Glier (1923), Sten Broman (1933), Wilfrid Mellers (‘play in music’, 1948) for Lysistrata; Charles Cushing (1933) for the Thesmophoriazusae; Humperdinck (composed 1879–86), Percival Kirby, Parry (1891), Walter Leigh (1936) for the Frogs; and Milhaud (1938) for the Plutus.
C.T. Walliser wrote early settings of choruses from the Clouds (after 1599). Orchestral works have included Humperdinck's overture Der Zug des Dionysus (composed 1880–81), adapted from his Frogs music; a Lysistrata suite by Ornstein (1930); comedy overtures by Bantock to the Frogs (1935), the Women's Festival (Thesmophoriazusae; 1941) and the Birds (1946). Chamber works include three duos for two sopranos and string quartet by Jean Françaix (1934), a violin and piano Aristophanes suite by György Ránki (1947), and the Aristophanic Extravaganza of Mellers (1949) for countertenor and chamber group.
F.W. Hall and W.M. Geldart, eds.: Aristophanis comoediae (Oxford, 1906–7, 2/1945)
B.B. Rogers, ed. and trans.: Aristophanes (London and Cambridge, MA, 1924/R)
W. Beare: The Roman Stage (London, 1950, 3/1964), 340ff
M. Okál: ‘Aristophane et les musiciens’, Charisteria Francisco Novotný octogenario oblata, ed. F. Stiebitz and R. Hošek (Prague, 1962), 29–42
J. Taillardat: Les images d’Aristophane (Paris, 1962, 2/1965), 456ff
E. Moutsopoulos: ‘La philosophie de la musique et le théâtre d’Aristophane’, Mélanges Vourvéris (Paris, 1964), 201–37
W.D. Anderson: Ethos and Education in Greek Music (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 55ff
J. Defradas: ‘Le chant des Grenouilles: Aristophane critique musical’, Revue des études antiques, lxxi (1969), 23–37
A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 99–116 [translated excerpts referring to musical subjects]
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo's Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 94–125
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN (1), ROBERT ANDERSON (2)